Top 10 Web Sites Every Programmer Should Visit On A Daily Basis

Instead of getting up every morning and reading the newspaper, visit these 10 websites to determine the pulse of what's happening in the tech industry.

We all have our daily routine of waking up, checking our email, and heading to work.

But what is your regular go-to website for tech news in the morning or during the day?

Someone asked me this question last week (along with "what is my daily routine?"). I had to think about all of the websites I visit on a daily basis and which ones would cause me to flip out if they didn't exist anymore.

These websites are merely ones that I've grown to love over the years and visit ritually.

I'm sure you have your favorites as well.

Post them in the comments below so we can all benefit from that secret site that no one knows about. ;-)

1. TechCrunch

For over TechCrunch provides the best tech coverage around and even has a daily tech report video every day called The Crunch Report which is a great tech roundup as to the latest news-worthy events for the day.

2. CNet

Ever since CBS bought CNet, it's been a tech powerhouse for daily news as well. I usually check out their gadgets area, their reviews on laptops and digital cameras, and watch their daily video news as well.

3. Twitter Moments

Sometimes, the news is slow when it comes to ground-breaking headlines. Yet, with Twitter's new Moments, you're always up to date with the latest tweets in the tech world. I visit the site first thing in the morning to find out what I missed in the eight hours I was asleep.

Because I've heard eight hours in Internet time is something like 56 hours. :-)

4. Reddit

Along with Twitter Moments, Reddit always has the latest news on your topic of choice (and sometimes other topics of choice you don't care about). For example, mine is the dotNet subreddit. Always great stuff and always the latest news.

5. DotNet Kicks

Sorry if I'm getting too "nichey," but if you are a .NET developer, you may want to take notice of this news/blog aggregator. People post .NET articles, news, and blog posts on a daily basis and ask people to upvote their favorites. A great site for .NET specific news.

6. Feedly

Since the demise of Google Reader, I was "jonesing" because after collecting a large number of RSS feeds over the years, I still needed a way to have the news delivered to me.

The good news was that Feedly saw the need for an RSS reader after Google Reader went down. At first, it was shakey, but now, it replaced Google Reader and is vital to how I read and share my daily news.

10 years ago, I started using RSS readers and to this day, I'm still using RSS through Feedly to bring the news to me.

7. HighScalability.com

Every once in a while, a site comes along that allows you to peek behind the curtain and see what the wizards are running for a high-powered website. That site is HighScalability.com.

They post on a weekly basis and provide a number of case studies for what all of the big boys are running in their web stack.

For example, today, they posted the architecture for The Dollar Shave Club. Outstanding! 

8. DZone

I remember when DZone first appeared. Even in it's infancy, I felt like I found a home. I even called it a Digg for Developers.

Now, the developer powerhouse provides every category of news including Agile, Big Data, Web Development, Performance, Java, IoT, Mobile, and a ton more.

To this day, it's still my favorite site for programmer news.

However, it is extremely hard to keep up with their RSS feeds. :-)

9. Hacker News

I know what you're thinking, but HackerNews.com is by YCombinator and despite the title, it's very reputable and provides a large number of technology posts including programming posts.

It's a mix between Digg and Reddit.

10. Slashdot

It has to be the oldest news site on this list, but it's still the most prevalent. While it's not the flashiest of websites, it still does a great job providing great tech coverage to the masses.

Conclusion

I try to visit these sites on a daily, if not every other day, to always find out the latest tech news. I'm pretty sure if you've been around on the Internet for a while, this list is far from complete, but I believe these sites are probably the best out there.

And I believe you can contribute to this list as well.

For some of the sites, they've been covering the news for the tech community for over 10 years...wow!

You can imagine their storage capacity and how much they've archived.

BONUS: If you're a web developer, I posted a list of the What are the Top 10 Websites a Web Developer Must See on Quora.com.

Got a favorite? Post it in the comments below.